SST - Hotel Room 12th Floor

Question 1

“Ululating”

Answer 1

• Word choice
• has connotations of reverberating and non-stop, which suggests the sirens of the emergency services are constant. This highlights they are always needed at night and helps to emphasise the violence in the city.

Question 2

“Racing”

Answer 2

• Word choice
• has connotations of speed and haste which suggests the emergency services are constantly required at crime scenes and that there are many instances of violence in the city at night.

Question 3

“Coldwater”

Answer 3

• Word choice
• has connotations of poverty and lack of basic needs which suggests there are parts of New York that do not benefit from the wealth the city generates and are full of crime due to a lack of services.

Question 4

“Glazed”

Answer 4

• Word choice
• has connotations of permanently fixing something in place which suggests that there will always be blood on the pavements of New York as the amount of crime and violence is very high.

Question 5

“foreign”

Answer 5

The word choice of “foreign” has connotations of different which suggests that midnight is difficult to understand which makes us afraid.

Question 6

“A helicopter skirting like a damaged insect”

Answer 6

• Imagery
• a helicopter is being compared to a damaged insect. Just as a damaged insect would fly in circles if it had an injured wing, so the helicopter is circling as it comes in to land. This negative imagery may suggest that MacCaig is critical of the helicopter and perhaps disapproves of this technology as another example of America’s capitalism and wealth.

Question 7

“That jumbo-sized dentist drill”

Answer 7

• Imagery
• the Empire State Building is being compared to a dentist’s drill. Just as a dentist’s drill is used to remove rot from a person’s tooth and can be painful to experience, so the building is presented as an unpleasant sight on the landscape. This suggests that MacCaig is mocking the largest building in the world at the time because of its shape and is being critical of America’s need to build it in the first place.

Question 8

“But now midnight has come in from foreign places”

Answer 8

• Imagery
• the personification compares midnight to an unwelcome visitor. Just as an unwelcome visitor is uninvited, intruding and unwanted so midnight is a part of the day we do not embrace because it scares us.

Question 9

“I lie in bed, between a radio and a television set, and hear…”

Answer 9

• Sentence Structure
• parentheses - used to add in extra information about the technology in the hotel room. This emphasises the noise out on the street that MacCaig is trying to block out with this technology but can’t.

Question 10

“Broken bones”, the harsh screaming”

Answer 10

• Sentence Structure
• synecdoche - only the parts of a person who has been hurt or injured is mentioned here which dehumanises them to only their injuries. This suggests the emergency services are so busy and overstretched that they can only deal with the physical injuries of victims of crime in the city but they could also be hurt in other ways.

Question 11

“The frontier is never/ somewhere else”

Answer 11

• Sentence Structure
• enjambment - emphasises the word choice of “never” which makes it clear that there is no escape from violence or the darkness within human nature.